Tag: bed

Meet the other BMW with a bed: Stuart Appleby’s M5 Ute

Filed under: Aftermarket, Performance, Truck, BMW, Australia, Celebrities, Luxury

BMW M5 Ute

Stuart Appleby’s BMW M5 Ute – Click above for high-res image gallery

Turns out the BMW M3 pickup we showed you yesterday isn’t the first BMW to be turned into a sport pickup. Back in 2008, PGA Tour golfer Stuart Appleby had his E39 BMW M5 turned into a ute by Australian custom shop Southern Rod.

Appleby has a deep-seated love of utes from his childhood on an Australian dairy farm, and has loved M cars since he first laid eyes on them. Appleby has a history of tearing into his rides, trying to squeeze each extra pony from them. His first M5 hadn’t gone 4,500 miles before the engine was torn down and pushed to 460 horsepower.

The build was finished in October 2008, and used an undamaged M5 to make a factory-looking build as easy as possible. The build took months and left no stone unturned making sure the car retained its original stiffness and functioned like a normal Ute.

We dig the finished product, and we dig that Appleby doesn’t care what people think of it. Along the way, the car got a sport suspension to go along with the 460-horsepower engine, thanks to a chip, headers and exhaust.

Gallery: Stuart Appleby’s M5 Ute

BMW M5 UteBMW M5 Ute frontBMW M5 UteBMW M5 UteBMW M5 Ute

[Source: M5ute | Images: M5ute]

Meet the other BMW with a bed: Stuart Appleby’s M5 Ute originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 17 Mar 2011 19:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Toyota finally addresses Tundra ‘bed bounce’ with TSB

Filed under: Truck, Recalls, Toyota

Toyota Tundra Limited

2007 Toyota Tundra Limited – Click above for high-res image gallery

Any pickup truck driver will tell you that the overall ride of their vehicle improves with a little bit of weight in the bed, but some trucks are naturally worse than others when it comes to unladen comfort. In fact, this exact issue is why Chrysler made the decision to switch to coil springs in lieu of the more common leafs in the rear of the latest fullsize Ram trucks.

But there’s one fullsize truck on the market that has gotten more complaints than any other, and it’s the 2007 through 2010 Toyota Tundra. For whatever reason, owners of these particular trucks tend to complain of a choppy ride much more often than owners of competitor’s trucks, and, despite a host of aftermarket solutions to the problem, for years these complaints went unacknowledged by Toyota.

Not any more. According to the boys at Tundra Headquarters, the Japanese automaker has finally announced a TSB that is intended to greatly reduce the so-called bed-bounce issue that has plagued the truck since ’07. The TSB applies only to Double Cab Tundras and involves replacing the rear body mount bushings with new, upgraded units. It’s also important to note that this is a TSB, not a recall.

We’ve gone ahead and pasted the TSB after the break, and you’ll also find a video produced by a company that sells the Willybar ballast, which is intended to greatly reduce the bed-bounce problem. Judging from the graphic results in the video, we’d say the Willybar does its job rather admirably. Hopefully, Toyota’s TSB will prove just as effective. Thanks for the tip, Joel!

Gallery: 2007 Toyota Tundra Limited

[Source: Tundra Headquarters]

Continue reading Toyota finally addresses Tundra ‘bed bounce’ with TSB

Toyota finally addresses Tundra ‘bed bounce’ with TSB originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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